TheBrokenOrnament (3 page)

Chapter Five

Cherie looked up at him, still speechless from the fact that the man had actually kissed the back of her hand. She didn’t think men did that anymore. Warmth settled in her middle as she stared up at him. He acted as though he were some old-world gentleman instead of a twenty-first century kidnapper.

Not only did the man have manners, he had the most adorable dimple when he smiled. She wanted to reach up and feel it. The urge to reach up and touch that delightful hollow in his cheek was almost overpowering. Somehow, she managed to keep her hands fisted at her sides. It appeared the man could be charming, after all. She wondered exactly what it was that this Arty person told him to make him do such a complete attitude about-face.

What was it about that smile that made her want to stand here and stare at the man all day? He was a kidnapper, for goodness sakes. She tilted her head and stared at him critically. Well, he was at least an accomplice. Perhaps it was that Arty person who had brought her here and that was why he’d called the man.

“I wish I could say that I’m pleased to meet you, as well.” She grimaced at her choice of words. “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right. I’m not trying to say that I don’t think you’re a nice person. It’s just that I really don’t know you well enough to make that kind of decision.” She hurried to add, “I just wish I knew how I got here.” She frowned. “I find it difficult to believe that you had nothing to do with my being here.” Good grief! What was she saying? If she acted as though she believed he didn’t kidnap her, she could leave and call the police. “After all, how did I end up in your room?”

“If I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me.” He stood with his hips resting against the bureau.

Did he choose that spot because it was right next to the phone?

“Try me. The way I see it, you have nothing to lose. After all, I’m going to be hard-pressed to believe much of anything you say at this point.” She shifted her weight to her right foot and rested her hands on her hips. Did he think she was stupid or just plain gullible?

Hunter—if that was even his real name—rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “Okay, but remember, you asked me to tell you this. Don’t blame me when you think I’m some sort of lunatic.”

He paced away from the bureau to the window. He stopped with his back to her as he gazed out at something beyond the glass. “This isn’t the same world you’re used to.”

“What?” She stared at him as she moved toward the door slowly, hoping that he wouldn’t notice. “I wouldn’t expect Virginia to be anything like my home town, but it can’t be
that
different. What do you mean this isn’t the same world?” She continued to back toward the door.

“I don’t know how to explain this.” He rested his hands on the windowsill and leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the glass. He shook his head. “Arty told me that somehow, people are coming here, to our world, from other dimensions.”

The man was crazy! Cherie couldn’t help it. She choked and when she did, he turned.
Damn.
She’d almost made it to the door, too.

“Leave if you want.” He shrugged. “You’ll see that things here are different from your world. I can’t tell you how different, but you’ll see, eventually.” He pressed his lips together and looked past her to the door. “Go ahead.” He waved toward the exit. “Check it out.” He turned back toward the window. “I’ll be here waiting for you when you figure it out.”

Making a dive for the door, Cherie flung it open and ran out into the hall. At first she didn’t know where to go. She stood still for a split second staring at the door to the room across the hall, room sixteen-twenty-one. It should be easy enough to remember which room he was in when she called the police to have Hunter Vasco arrested for kidnapping. Maybe he’d end up in the psych ward and get the treatment he so desperately—and obviously—needed.

Making a right, she headed for what she hoped was the alcove where the elevators would be located. Turning the corner, she sighed with relief and hurried to the closest elevator and repeatedly pushed the button until the elevator’s bell dinged and the doors opened.

Thankfully, the elevator was empty and she didn’t have to wait for anyone to exit. Cherie hurried into the small enclosure and pressed the button for the first floor before leaning against the wall, her arms wrapped around her middle.

What in the world was going on? How did she get here and how in the heck would she get home? She had no identification and no way to get any. Hell, she couldn’t even prove who she was to get a temporary credit card to buy a ticket home. Not to mention the ID she would need to board whatever means of transportation she could procure. Cherie closed her eyes and vowed not to cry. She was so royally screwed it wasn’t funny.

Closing her eyes, Cherie shook her head and pressed her lips together. She refused to give in to tears. Nothing was impossible. She merely needed to find a way back. Maybe she could call someone from work to go to her house and send her the things she would need—though that would take a few days. Where would she stay with no identification and no credit card?

The elevator doors opened on the first floor and Cherie stepped out into the lobby of the hotel, saw one thing and stopped in her tracks. Another elevator dinged as it arrived, but Cherie barely heard it. What had her attention was a woman just outside the entrance doors to the hotel. Her small booth was covered in black and midnight blue velvet. What drew Cherie’s attention, though, was the tiny, flying lizard over the woman’s head.

A strange euphoria stole over Cherie as she watched the little creature bob and weave. Darkness ringed her vision as she watched something that couldn’t possibly exist. When the tiny creature that Cherie could only call a miniature dragon belched flame and smoke out through its mouth and nose, the darkness that ringed her vision grew until Cherie felt herself falling, falling, falling…

She wasn’t sure, but she could have sworn that she saw Hunter’s face and his incredibly sexy and scary pure black eyes before everything around her went the same shade of black.

Chapter Six

When Hunter followed the woman down to the lobby, he had expected her to be startled by what she would see, but he never expected her to faint dead away as he approached her from behind.

It was a good thing he’d followed her. Had she fallen on the hard, marble floor, she could have broken something or perhaps gotten a concussion if she’d hit her head.

He looked around, wondering what it was that caused her to faint and saw the fortuneteller just outside the doorway. As usual, the soothsayer was accompanied by a dragon. He frowned as he looked at the two and wondered if perhaps they didn’t have dragons where the woman came from.

He looked at the woman sitting on the couch in the common area, her German Shepherd Dog at her feet and wondered if, perhaps, her world didn’t have dogs. Whatever it was, it had startled the poor woman well enough that she’d lost consciousness over it.

Instinct told Hunter he should take the woman back to his room. While vampires now had rights, there were still slayers about who felt as though they shouldn’t have any rights, including the right to live. Should someone peg him as a vampire, or
nightwalker
as they deemed his kind, it could very well put the woman in danger.

Still, if he carried her back to his room, he would have a difficult time convincing her he did so to protect her. She would be more than willing to believe he’d truly kidnapped her and was merely trying to keep her from notifying the police.

Hunter gazed down at the woman in his arms and felt an unfamiliar tightening in his stomach and his chest. Whatever it was he felt for this woman, he didn’t have the right to feel it until she’d come to terms with the fact that she was no longer in Kansas. He frowned at that. Why had she called herself Dot? Wasn’t that short for…

“You, my friend, are an idiot,” he said to himself when he realized the reference. In fact, he was rather surprised that it took him so long to figure it out, considering he’d seen the movie in the theater when it first released.

Instead of taking Cherie back to his room, he carried her over to one of the couches in the common area and sat down with her in his lap. She probably wouldn’t like waking up in his arms, but he couldn’t seem to force himself to set her down.

He liked the way she felt in his arms. He loved the way her warm body pressed against his as though she was made for him. Hunter closed his eyes and groaned. He’d better hope she was the one or he could very well fall in love with her anyway and that would
not
be a good thing.

No vampire wanted to tie their life force to a human who could leave them at the proverbial drop of a hat. No. If he tied himself to her, he would want to know it was forever.

Leaning forward, he pressed his face against her hair and took a deep breath. He almost groaned aloud again at her unique scent. He could live the rest of his life never seeing the sunlight again if he had this woman by his side.

She smelled of sunshine and wildflowers. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. A field of tall grass and flowers filled his mind. He could see her wearing a white dress as she ran through the field. She looked back at him laughter on her face and a sparkle in her eyes.

That was what he was missing in his life. He missed the sound of laughter, his laughter. He watched Cherie as she ran through the field in front of him knowing that if he wanted to, truly wanted to, he could pour on his preternatural speed and capture her, but why spoil the fun of the chase?

Hunter didn’t even realize he sat rocking her until she stiffened in his arms.

“Stop rocking me and put me down. I’m fine.”When he let her go, she moved from his lap to the cushion next to him. “What happened?” She looked around warily.

“I have no idea. I stepped off of the elevator and you started to go down. I caught you so you wouldn’t harm yourself on the marble floor and I carried you over here.”

“Where you felt compelled to hold me in your arms, rocking me like a baby?” She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Seriously… what part of that did you think would be okay with me?”

“It was probably the part where I caught you and stopped you from cracking your head on the hard, marble flooring in front of the elevators.” He clenched his teeth. Was there no end to the rudeness of humans these days? They tried so desperately to be what they called politically correct when they merely needed tolerance for one another instead. “Perhaps you should spend more effort on being grateful that I caught you than insulted that I decided to hold you instead of resting your head on a couch that has seen over a thousand asses on it.” He stood and faced away from her, wondering how in the world he could have thought someone so rude could possibly be his mate.

“I—I’m sorry. I hadn’t thought of that.” She stood and moved to stand beside him. She reached out to him when she stumbled.

Hunter grasped her shoulders and held her to him, unable to ditch his upbringing no matter how much he wanted to do so at this particular time. His mother would have been appalled to even hear that he’d thought to let a woman fall when he could have caught her.

The scent of sunshine and wildflowers wafted up from her hair and his knees almost buckled. She
had
to be his mate. What other explanation could there be for his reaction to her?

“What happened?” His fingers tightened around her arms and she wobbled a bit. “What caused you to lose consciousness?”

It could have been her transition from one world to another. Something could have happened to cause her to pass out. A pressure change, perhaps, or a shift in the dimensional rift that brought her over could be the culprit. Somehow, though, he suspected it was something about their world that had shown her that he had been telling her the truth.

“I saw…something.” She frowned as she thought about it, before glancing toward the front entrance. “I could have sworn I saw something that can’t possibly exist.”

“The soothsayer?” he prompted, hoping to get her to elaborate so he could prove to her that she was no longer in the world where she had grown up.

“No.” She shook her head and moved away from him and toward the door. “It doesn’t matter. It can’t exist. I was seeing things, or imagining it.” She shook her head as though to clear it. “Whatever it was that I thought I saw, won’t be there now because you’re here.” She smiled, though he didn’t think she looked as confident as she wanted to appear.

After he delved into her mind, he knew it. She was scared spitless that she would see the dragon again. It wasn’t really seeing the dragon that had sent her over the edge into what she believed was a moment of madness, because, after all,
anyone
could make it appear as though a puppet was flying with strings and wires. It was impossible to make it belch fire without catching the thing on fire.

Hunter almost wanted to smile. He loved the fact that no matter how impossible the thing was that’s she’d seen, she was trying to reason it out instead of panicking. Even the fact that she fainted instead of running in the other direction showed she had courage, though he didn’t give a rat’s ass if his mate was courageous or not. His prerequisite for a life partner was that she be female. Period.

“Shall we go back and see if we can see this thing again? Perhaps if I see it as well, you won’t think that you have gone mad.”

“I haven’t gone crazy.” She pulled her hand from his forearm as though he’d burned her and thrust her chin in the air. “I had a rough night, being that someone kidnapped me and all.” She walked toward the front entrance and faltered when the psychic’s booth came into view.

Bending over, she rested her hands on her knees. “I’m not seeing this. I can’t be seeing this. It doesn’t exist. It’s some sort of trick. There’s no such thing as flying, fire-breathing dragons.”

Chapter Seven

Cold air hit Cherie hard as she approached the door and someone walked in. Cherie couldn’t take her eyes off of the thing in the front window. It couldn’t possibly be a dragon, but that’s exactly what it looked like.